


What Cost, Expelliarmus?

by Leela



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-21
Updated: 2010-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:09:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leela/pseuds/Leela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Elder Wand demands payment from the wielder if it's used to take or save a life. Harry did both, and the wand has exacted its price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Cost, Expelliarmus?

**Author's Note:**

> A bit weird and decidedly angst-filled. So, of course, batdina beta'd for me. The story is better for it, despite the pain caused by clearing away the deadwood.

Expelliarmus wasn't an unforgivable: it wasn't even a curse, a jinx, or a hex. The differences were unmistakeable: one word that didn't require the harsh intensity of the fatal two, twelve letters instead of the excruciating six. And yet what did all those differences matter if the one word resulted in a death, if the one word inflicts punishment on the speaker.

"Have you seen Harry Potter?" The woman's voice was cheerful, almost painful in its brightness. "Mother simply insists on meeting him this time."

Harry leaned his head against the cold glass of the window, wrapped his black velvet dress robes closer, and curled a little tighter on the deep sill, hiding in the shadows created by the curtains and a notice-me-not spell. Hidden from her and all the other people who laughed and chatted and danced and listened to music in the ballroom rented by the Ministry to celebrate the first anniversary of Voldemort's death.

As far back as he could remember, Harry hadn't expected life to be fair (and yes, I know it's not raining, he told his memory of Arabella Figg's voice), but surviving the war went far beyond unfair. Most days he desperately missed the peace of King's Cross, that waystation between death and life.

He and Draco were both alive, and that was almost more than either of them had expected. They'd made plans anyway, because they used to be young and immortal and couldn't really imagine any other possibility. When it was all over, when they didn't have to lie to their friends and their so-called allies and their families (real or adopted), then they wouldn't have to pretend that they still hated each other, make plans to meet in broom cupboards, or send coded messages signed with the names of others (and yes, I know that making plans just gets the universe laughing, he told Arabella, but we were so very young).

When it was all over, they had planned to discover each other over hours and days and months, to figure out if this frantic thing they'd found in the middle of insanity could become something more. After six long months, they'd finally had time to meet. Draco freed from the threats of Azkaban and homelessness. Harry no longer overwhelmed by days filled with press conferences, funerals, trials, condemnations, exonerations, and meetings to plan, rebuild, commiserate, or commemorate.

They'd booked a room in this odd hotel that Draco knew, in a Wizarding town that Harry hadn't known existed. Draco had waited for him on the bed, head resting on a pile of pillows, long legs stretched out, just the tip of his tongue poking out from between his lips as he looked up from his book. Harry had stood in front of the bed, looking, wanting.

Then they touched – Draco kneeling on the quilt, his hands drawing Harry close – and their dreams had ended in the memory of their hands gripped tight, a flash of gold and green, a blast of agony that drove them apart. For three months they'd tried, meeting here and there, touching in this way and that, until a mere glance left their nerves shivering with remembered pain.

"It's the elder wand," Hermione said, after consulting with wandmakers and spending weeks with Draco in the Malfoy and Grimmauld libraries. "It demands payment from the wielder if it's used to take or save a life, and you did both. Can you imagine how much it must have cost Dumbledore? According to his biography, Grindelwald and he were lovers."

~fin~


End file.
